Catalogue Canceling

One really easy way to go green is to cancel your unwanted catalogues and junk mail. It is better for the environment and saves us a lot of time mail sorting. If you do this we can save 1,000 trees and more, and we can save 1 million gallons of water. Its amazing, and slightly upsetting how many trees and water we waste. For more information we have listed a few links below.

https://www.catalogchoice.org/signup
http://www.change.org/petitions/z-let-the-lorax-speak-for-the-trees
http://www5.parkschool.org/blogs/ted_wells/

By: Anna

EARTH: The Operators Manual

PBS has a great program on climate change and clean, green energy opportunities.  To watch the full program and for more information click link below:
http://www.pbs.org/programs/earth-the-operators-manual/

Newton Student Environmental Art Contest 2012

Theme:

If I were President, I would
________________
(fill in the blank)
to make America greener!

Submission deadline Monday, March 5, 2012.

Awards Program: Thursday April 5, 2012
Newton Cultural Center, 6:30 - 8:30 pm

For more information: http://www.greendecade.org/artcontest.html

Garbage Island

Garbage Island (The North Pacific Gyre) is a mass of rotating trash that is twice the size of Texas! The trash mass is 90% plastic waste. It is located of the coast of California and Japan.  Unfortunately, there are at least four garbage gyres that pollute and harm our oceans. It effects many marine animals and birds, which ingest lethal amounts of plastic.

For more information please click the links below:

http://5gyres.org

By Theo and Leah (4th grade)

Energy Island (Samso Island, Denmark)

Samso Island is an energy efficient island, using only sustainable wind, solar, and water power. This idea was organized by a teacher named Soren Hermansen. In the beginning, one of Samso Island's biggest challenges was to get everyone to agree to use renewable energy. Now they are able to produce 10% more energy than they use, and are able to sell the extra alternative and sustainable energy for money.  We learned about Samso Island from a book we read called "Energy Island: How One Community Harnessed The Wind And Changed Their World" by Allen Drummond in the Cabot Library.

For more information, click link below.

http://www.amazon.com/Energy-Island-community-harnessed-changed/dp/0374321841

                         

By Caroline and Elena

Bird Accident in Utah

On December 14 in St. George, Utah thousands of migratory birds were killed or injured after mistaking the Wal-Mart parking lot that was covered in snow to be a lake. When migrating these birds will dive into a lake head-first. It killed 1,500 birds and injured 3,000. This shows what damage we do in developing habitats and important places in animals lives.

To read more please click the link below:
http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-birds-crash-landing-utah-152219107.html

      By: Anna

Green Project-Recycled Paper Basket

Here is a green project on the Design Sponge blog.  This project reuses old packing papers or news papers.  Great for practicing sewing and weaving.

http://www.designsponge.com/2012/01/sewing-101-recycled-paper-basket.html